Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) processing has gained widespread adoption as an effective means to increase throughput and reliability. For instance, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11n wireless local area network (WLAN) standard combines MIMO processing with orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) to address the demand for reliable wireless broadband services, such as high-definition television and videoconferencing. MIMO techniques can be used either to improve robustness of the link via spatial diversity or increase data rates via spatial multiplexing. Furthermore, a combination of diversity and multiplexing techniques can be used to trade off reliability and data rate.
Most wireless systems require a receiver to estimate wireless channel response, also known as channel state information (CSI), before decoding transmitted data. The receiver typically estimates CSI using training sequences sent along with the data. In many situations, it is also possible for the transmitter to obtain CSI estimates. For instance, the IEEE 802.11n WLAN standard supports CSI feedback from the receiver to the transmitter. It is well known that the information capacity of a wireless system increases if CSI is available at the transmitter. Given CSI, a MIMO transmitter can adjust the gains and phases (i.e., weights) of each transmit antenna to steer energy in optimal directions towards the receiver. Such steering of energy is often called transmit precoding or beamforming. Transmit precoding can be used for one or more spatial data streams. A MIMO receiver can use CSI to compute the optimal weights for each receive antenna to maximize the signal quality of each data stream.
Conventional precoding techniques determine the optimal transmit antenna weights based on maximizing throughput or reliability in the presence of spatially isotropic additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). However, in many deployment scenarios, interference is often several times stronger than the background AWGN. Interference causes significant loss of reliability and throughput for wireless systems. Many interference sources have distinct spatial, temporal, and frequency signatures. However, traditional approaches to interference mitigation, such as carrier frequency scanning and hopping, do not effectively exploit the characteristics of the interference. Furthermore, a lack of available frequencies may limit the applicability of frequency hopping.